ARTICLES ABOUT FUTURE BY DATE - PAGE 3

— After months of waiting, a team of chemists and engineers from Aberdeen Proving Ground is now ready to begin the historic destruction of Syria's chemical weapons, the Pentagon said Thursday. The work is to take place aboard a container ship specially fitted with equipment to neutralize Syrian stocks of the World War I blister agent sulfur mustard and the sarin precursor DF. The team of some 64 civilians from the Edgewood Area of Aberdeen Proving Ground sailed from Italy on Wednesday for an undisclosed location in international waters, where they plan to destroy the materials under heavy international guard.

With beach balls, snorkels and other vacation-themed decorations festooning a section of BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport, six top Southwest Airlines executives will split off in pairs to a steel drum beat and board three flights to the Caribbean. The elaborate sendoff, planned for Tuesday morning, will mark the official entry of the largest domestic carrier in the United States into the international market. BWI officials also hope it signals the start of the growing Anne Arundel County airport's ascendance as a major hub for domestic travelers looking to hop abroad.

Jacques Kelly 's recent column ("Movement to open more corner stores in Remington," June 21), could serve as testimony for why the Baltimore City Council should not eliminate corner stores in the city zoning code. Healthy, vibrant communities need a mix of land uses that fit their scale and other characteristics. The corner store, a community fixture of the past, can fill a need throughout Baltimore and elsewhere. As we've learned over and over again, older, organic development patterns are often preferable to those driven by auto-dependent design.

Perhaps the most hotly contested - or at least the nastiest - local race in the state this year is the Republican primary for executive in Anne Arundel County. Incumbent Laura Neuman, a political novice who was appointed to the job last year after John Leopold resigned in disgrace, is fighting a challenge from Del. Steve Schuh, who had been planning for this race before most people in Arundel political circles had even heard of Ms. Neuman. They are spending unprecedented sums of money for a primary in Anne Arundel, and most of it appears dedicated to tearing each other down.

The Ravens contacted Haloti Ngata's representatives earlier this offseason to begin contract extension talks that the team hoped would allow the 30-year-old defensive lineman to finish his career in Baltimore. Those talks, aimed at reducing Ngata's team-high $16 million salary cap number in each of the final two years of his deal and extending his stay in the purple and black, didn't get very far. But as he's preparing for his ninth NFL season with the Ravens, Ngata said he'd like nothing more than to follow in the footsteps of his closest friend on the team, Terrell Suggs, and sign a contract extension to end his career in the same place it began.

A 12-6 loss to Salisbury in a Capital Athletic Conference tournament semifinal on April 26 closed out the 2014 campaign for Frostburg State. It also signaled the end for the program's first recruiting class. Seventeen seniors graduated as the first group that committed to coach Tommy Pearce and the Bobcats, which fielded a varsity squad in 2011. That class absorbed records of 6-11 and 2-15 in its first two years before enjoying marks of 11-6 in 2013 and 13-5 in 2014. Pearce acknowledged that Senior Day, when the team walloped CAC rival St. Mary's, 17-10, on April 19, was not easy for him. “It was emotional,” he said.

Patricia Warble's letter laying blame for the negative transformation of Dundalk to greed, neglect and opportunism truly misses the point of what ails Dundalk and its surrounding communities ( "Dundalk needs more than a new marketing plan," June 12). What really ails the area is the loss of good, well-paying middle-class jobs. As someone who grew up in the area, I can tick off a long list of companies that provided those well-paying jobs over the years that are no longer there: Bethlehem Steel, General Motors, Western Electric, Eastern Stainless, Rheem Manufacturing, American Standard, Signode, Thompson Wire and Owens Boat Builders.

Later this month, an estimated 5,000 Presbyterians from all over the country will gather in Detroit for the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Among them will be 645 elected commissioners. This year, those commissioners will be voting on marriage equality. Decisions made at this General Assembly will affect the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) couples in the denomination who want their marriages to be blessed with the same joy and affirmation as the marriages of other couples in the church.

No one writes a love song like Future. The 30-year-old, born Nayvadius Wilburn, hinted at his prowess on earlier mixtapes, but the Atlanta artist set himself apart from peers on his 2012 debut album, “Pluto.” In particular, Future won a legion of fans with the hit ballad-meets-banger, “Turn on the Lights,” which found him tenderly singing, through amplified Auto-Tune, “I wanna tell the world about you just so they can get jealous.” His...

Former Ravens safety Ed Reed stood in the middle of a makeshift softball diamond on a field he knows well and waved his arms as fans chanted his name. Reed, who played 11 seasons with the Ravens, has long said that Baltimore will always feel like home, even after his expected Hall of Fame playing career is over. When that will be, however, remains very much a mystery. Speaking at former teammate Lardarius Webb's charity softball game Sunday at M&T Bank Stadium, Reed said that he is preparing to play in the 2014 season.